It sounds as though Zack Snyder, Chris Terrio, and Joss Whedon drew inspiration for the much-maligned (some might say unfairly) war movie Pearl Harbor (which also starred Ben Affleck) for the original script to his DC movie Justice League.
Speaking to Joe Russo on Pizza Film School, Snyder said; “I think in the original script, Lois (Amy Adams) and Batman (Affleck) got together briefly. And there was this whole other thing that everyone was like, ‘Oh my God, you can’t do that.'”
“And… then I loved the idea of like setting up this sort of concept… it’s sort of like in a movie like where the husband goes off to war, and he’s dead, and the wife moves on, and then the husband appears, like, ‘I’m not dead. I’m fine.'” Like exactly what happens in the Ben Affleck romance movie Pearl Harbor, you mean?! And also happens in new movie One True Loves starring Phillipa Soo, Luke Bracey, and Simu Liu?!
Snyder continued; “How do you deal with that? I was super into that concept of, ‘Oh no, Superman (Henry Cavill) can be brought back to life. So now what happens with this?’ And Lois was like, ‘I’m still in love with Superman. We were kind of a thing.’ But then at that point, Batman had already fallen in love with Lois.”
It is interesting to consider that Clark Kent always has his one true love Lois Lane, throughout all the best-known incarnations of the character, across Superman movies and TV shows. However, Batman has had many, many different romantic interests – with the best-known being Catwoman, but also the likes of Vicki Vale (Kim Basinger), Dr. Chase Meridian (Nicole Kidman), Rachel Dawes (Katie Holmes, Maggie Gyllenhaal) and more.
After Snyder decided that Batman (Ben Affleck) and Superman (Henry Cavill) were going to share their mother’s name, also sharing Lois would have been a bit much on top of that. We would love to think that Affleck read the original script and said “this is the plot of seminal disaster movie Pearl Harbor” and that’s what put the final nail in the coffin.
Check out our guides to the best Batman actors and the best Superman actors.